Just because it always has been, doesn't mean it always will be

Archive for the day “April 26, 2013”

‘Ever since the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous 2009 ruling that same-sex marriage is legal in the state, Iowa conservatives have worked tirelessly to undo the decision’.

‘With those efforts failing, Republicans in Iowa’s state legislature have come up with a new plan: cutting their pay until they quit’.

‘The Iowa City Gazette reports that the right-wingers’ amendment to House File 120 would lower the salaries of the four justices who were part of the decision legalizing same-sex marriage, while leaving the salaries of the other three unchanged’.

‘4 – US House Republicans‘

‘House Republicans are also acting insane on the federal level, testing the classic definition of insanity by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “thing” in question is repealing Obamacare’.

‘The Hill reports that GOP freshmen are pushing for the House to hold a 37th vote on repealing the landmark health care law, apparently out of jealousy of their colleagues who have already tried and failed to do away with the law’.

“The guys who have been up here the last two years, we can go home and say, ‘Listen, we voted 36 different times to repeal or replace Obamacare.’ Tell me what the new guys are supposed to say?” second-term Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) asked’.

‘Rep. Trey Radel concurred. “I want a chance as a freshman to do that, even if it’s just symbolic.”

‘3 – Ray Canterbury‘

‘When then-presidential candidate Newt Gingrich revealed that his latest “big idea” was repealing child labor laws and putting students to work as janitors, his plan was primarily met with a combination of scorn and derision’.

‘But to Ray Canterbury, a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, the proposal was no laughing matter’.

‘Canterbury took Gingrich’s plan one step further with his argument against the Feed to Achieve Act, which would create a public-private partnership to provide free breakfast and lunch for all West Virginia students, from kindergarten through high-school seniors’.

‘According to Canterbury, however, “there is no such thing as a free lunch” — so those kindergarteners should have to labor for their meals’.

“I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it,” Canterbury said’.

‘While Canterbury’s proposal may seem stupid and offensive, it does have at least one supporter: Fox News, which is now asking viewers to weigh in on the Dickensian plan’.

‘2 – Pat Robertson‘

‘700 Club host Pat Robertson’s daily rant was even more untethered to reality than usual Thursday, when he claimed that Planned Parenthood actually inspired Adolf Hitler to murder millions in the Holocaust’.

‘Margaret Sanger “was the one who set the stage for Adolf Hitler…he copied her,” Robertson insisted, citing Google as his evidence’.

“What they said was, they said ‘what we’ve got to do in order to get the black people in America to have abortions, we have to have some noted black leader who will come out for Planned Parenthood and we’ll give him the Margaret Sanger Award and therefore he will be our poster boy showing the black people they should have abortions,” Robertson added.”It was strictly genocide.”

‘As Right Wing Watch points out, both PolitiFact and The Washington Post debunked the claim when it was previously put forth by noted truth-teller Herman Cain’.

‘1 – Glenn Beck and Stella Tremblay’1:

‘Yet again, Glenn Beck claims at least a share of the number one spot on the list, this time for his crazy, libelous claims about the Boston Marathon bombing’.

‘For the past week, Beck has relentlessly claimed that a Saudi victim of the attack is actually an al Qaeda operative who recruited the Tsarnaev brothers to carry out the bombing — a fact that the Obama administration has, naturally, covered up’.

‘Although Beck’s latest conspiracy is easily debunked — even by a guest on his own show — he is sticking with it, insisting that the cover-up “is so far beyond Benghazi” that it’s criminal, and an irreversible turning point in American history’.

‘What sets this story apart from all of Beck’s other wild conspiracies is the fact that an elected official has bought into it’.

The Senate, in what was no doubt calm deliberation, came to and offered for thoughtful consideration a ‘solution’ to the ‘Great Airport Delays’.

‘The Senate passed a bill on Thursday evening to end air traffic controller furloughs caused by the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester that have been blamed for mounting flight delays across the country.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)’.

What a relief!!

After all (and I am serious) we do need to cut spending and the Budget Control Act did that(and while I am serious, the Budget Contro Axct wsn’t). We do need to begin cutting spending to save for our future generations.

That’s what Republicans keep telling us.

Cut spending to save for our future generations.

One small problem……

‘Collins’s version of the bill to end the air traffic controllers’ furlough allows the FAA to transfer airport improvement funds to eliminate the agency’s budget shortfall’.

“The fact is that we have far more human garbage in this country than we ever ought to have tolerated, and this has nothing to do with ethnicity or religion; it has to do with what is in people’s hearts and minds”.

‘Rep. Stella Tremblay of New Hampshire was effusive in her praise for Glenn Beck last week, especially for his prediction of a “Black Ops” event’:

“Just as you said would happen. Top Down, Bottom UP. The Boston Marathon was a Black Ops ‘terrorist’ attack”.

“One suspect killed, the other one will be too before they even have a chance to speak”.

“Drones and now ‘terrorist’ attacks by our own Government”.

“Sad day, but a ‘wake up’ to all of us. First there was a ‘suspect’ then there wasnt (sic). Infowars broke the story and they knew they had been ‘found out’”.

‘In an interview with the Foster’s Daily Democrat (now there’s some irony for you) on Tuesday, Tremblay doubled down on the insanity’:

“It was one of my constituents that sent me an email, and it went to a site where a, I think it was a major retired marine was speaking, and then he said, ‘Please go to Infowars,’ and they had pictures of, what is it, black ops? With black backpacks. They show them at the scene, so they knew something was going on.”

‘Ohhhhhh.. I think I get it now. These idiots don’t know the difference between off-duty soldiers in fatigues and Black Ops guys’.

In a House Committee on Appropriations hearing, Representative Harold Rogers (R-KY) blamed Federal Aviation Administration Chief Michael Huerta: “You didn’t forewarn us that this was coming; you didn’t ask advice about how we should handle it.”

As travelers across the country began feeling the consequences of sequester cuts at airports this week, legislators were busy determining who to blame for the increase in disrupted travel. From the beginning Democrats have been consistent in their message—”the sequester will hurt Americans, instead we need a combination of responsible cuts and significant revenue.”

The Republican response to the sequester, on the other hand, has been divided and unclear. Before the cuts materialized, some Republicans were charging Democrats with being “dramatic,” some even welcoming the cuts. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) said, “It is going to happen. It is 2.4 percent of the budget, and it is not the end of the world. We want the savings. We want to bank those savings, and we want to move on.” Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) echoed those same sentiments: “We had a grand total of three phone calls concerned about it. They…